I've officially made my first run through the conference's booth section. Here are a few of the highlights.

Alpha Point: Another Bitcoin exchange headquartered in SF. They offer the standard range of services, but are focusing on traders and merchants at the moment. The booth has a selection of fortune cookies with Bitcoin related fortunes and, on a side note, founder Joe Ventura has great taste in ties.

Ripple: Ripple is the other digital currency that, in my opinion, everyone should be talking about. Unlike Bitcoin look-a-likes, Ripple is a different kind of animal completely. Without getting into too much detail, it enables P2P currency conversion in-network, in effect streamlining the process of navigating multiple currencies to make payment into something that takes less than two minutes.

The other fascinating feature is the possibility of P2P debt issuance, but more on that some other time-it's a fascinating concept that deserves more space than what I have here.

OpenGarden: Open Garden facilitates internet connectivity across mobile devices. A user running the app who is connected to the internet can allow another user to access the internet by effectivley allowing them to tether. That second user could then allow a third to piggyback on them, even as they do the same to the original user with direct internet acess.

Seasteading Institute: Competitive governance is something near and dear to my heart and I'm glad to see it represented here. The Seasteading Institute furthers the political, technical, and commercial research necessary to one day establish autonomous communities at sea. To many, this sounds insane and this is another idea I don't have space to properly elucidate, so I'll leave it be for now.